One of the nice things about the clojure programming language is how flexible built-in functions are. Like python, clojure is not typed, so you can spend less time worrying about how your functions/methods handle types, and more thinking about the actual data that is being worked on. In this way, it is more of a ‘data-first’ kind of language.
Clojure’s core async library recently added a namespace called ‘flow’.
The point of flow is to provide abstractions for building easily composable systems where separate processes can be easily connected together. It is supposed to make these kind of stateful, ‘parallel’ type systems more ‘functional’, and therefore more easy to reason about and test.
- tags
- #philosophy
A note on some thoughts around ‘data’. Inspired, in the first instance, by this discussion on hacker news.
TODO Summarise some key points from the Hickey/Kay discussion
- The starting point of the discussion is the questioning of the assumption that ‘data is a good idea’ from Kay
- Hickey challenges the assumption that data has any innate value at all. Any ‘value’ is added through interpretation.
- So, the core issue here is around the value (moral or otherwise) of ‘data’, and whether it has any at all.
Questions
In relation to this line by Hickey: